OntwerperDanish
Poul Kjaerholm
3 actieve items
Poul Kjærholm was born in 1929 in Østervrå, a small town in northern Jutland, Denmark. He came to furniture through the craftsman's route: an apprenticeship with cabinetmaker Gronbech starting in 1948, followed by studies at the Danish School of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen from 1952. That training gave him a deep familiarity with material precision, but his instincts quickly moved away from the wood-centered idiom that dominated Danish design at the time.
Where Hans Wegner, Finn Juhl, and Børge Mogensen were exploring the warmth and grain of wood, Kjærholm turned to matte steel. His reasoning was not industrial but aesthetic: he was fascinated by the way steel refracts light, and he treated it as a natural material with its own visual character. Steel provided structural rigor while allowing the piece to appear almost weightless - particularly when combined with the organic materials he favored. Leather, woven cane, marble, and rope appeared alongside steel frames in compositions that never let one material dominate entirely.
From the mid-1950s onward, his primary production partner was Ejvind Kold Christensen (EKC), a Copenhagen manufacturer who assembled a network of specialist craftsmen - master metalworkers, the leatherworker Ivan Schlechter, and the woodshop PP Møbler - capable of meeting Kjærholm's exacting tolerances. The collaboration was not oriented toward volume; each piece was made with a precision that had more in common with instrument manufacturing than furniture production.
The PK22 lounge chair of 1956 became his most widely recognized design: a low-slung frame in matte chromed steel with a seat and back in leather or woven cane. It was shown at the Formes Scandinaves exhibition in Paris in 1958, where it drew international attention and contributed to Kjærholm receiving the Lunning Prize that year. The PK61 coffee table of 1955 is equally considered: a square top sitting on four identical base elements joined by visible machine screws, held in place by gravity rather than fastening - a quietly theatrical structural decision.
He returned to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts as a lecturer in 1955 and was appointed professor in 1976, succeeding Ole Wanscher. He remained at the Academy until his death in 1980. His teaching carried the same rigorous approach he applied to his own work: material honesty, structural clarity, and the discipline of reduction.
Kjærholm's designs are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and museums in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Germany. Since 1982, a significant portion of the catalogue has been produced by Fritz Hansen (now Republic of Fritz Hansen), which has maintained the original manufacturing standards.
On the Swedish auction market, Kjærholm's work trades at notably higher levels than most mid-century Scandinavian designers. The Auctionist platform holds 45 items across 45 lots, with 2 currently active. The leading houses by volume are Stockholms Auktionsverk Magasin 5 (10 lots), Bukowskis Stockholm (8), and Bukowskis Malmö (3). Chairs and armchairs account for 22 items, tables for 16. Top results on the platform include a pair of PK22 chairs at SEK 43,215, a second PK22 pair at SEK 38,814, a single PK22 at SEK 21,390, and a PK61 coffee table at SEK 19,192 - results consistent with the sustained collector demand his work commands globally.